Why is Mars the current objective when it would be easier and more practical in the long run to build a moon base?

Haven't we had this exact thread with teh very same pic. just a week ago or so?

>Why is Mars the current objective when it would be easier and more practical in the long run to build a moon base?

To get off the ground you need money and to do that you need political alignment. The Moon is already "done" and the next challenge is therefore Mars.

Sure, as most people in here will know there is a lot left to learn about our Moon but that alone is not sufficient. After all there was only once a trained geologist on the Moon and he was on the very last mission.

China is fine with conquering Moon, which pretty much force the USA to get on Moon as well.

China is also using the moon for their geopolitics spiel and isolate the NASA from the rest of the science community.

Russia and ESA will join China, while the USA is left alone.

Because people are afraid to get seriously involved in space colonization. So they set an unreachable goal before 30 or 50 years.

>people can only live like the Morlocks on Mars at best
>can't return

>They sent TNT to explode a small exterior portion of the moon.
>they found water.

Nigga, you are dumb as fuck.

A lunar base would allow for more efficient construction of spacecraft.
The moon also has deposits of titanium
The lack of other resources vital for survival is a problem
But as a staging ground for interplanetary exploration, the moon would be the first step

People will not live outside of the earth. The colonization bullshit non-science guys are sprouting hurts space exploration.

>They sent TNT
>TNT

Nope, they just crashed a thing into the moon using only kinetic energy.

>implying people in the next century won't spend their entire life in a VR simulation

Who doesn't want to live in some underground shithole with only mushrooms to eat because that's the only thing that can effectively grow there?

Indeedily.

So you can chose to live in an overcrowded, dangerous world where you cannot get far safely, the atmosphere is a constant worry and yo can be killed at any moment while eating food you really don't want to know how was made.

Or you can go to the Moon.

Moon would be more like an Antarctic expedition for the people.

I am used to live north of the polar circle.

Where can I get my ticket?

the moon has fucktons of resources, and they're all far easier to obtain, and far more useful to obtain, than on earth
and then you have the craters which hold all the delicious minerals of the asteroids due to them being what caused the craters
we should have had a moonbase 40 years ago

That's the ESA's current objective.

>> fucktons of resources
The Moon doesn't even have appreciable quantities of carbon which are necessary to turn iron into steel

Carbon is extremely common in asteroids though
could easily haul in the needed carbon from NEOs for the lunar refineries, exactly like it is done down on earth

Perfect place for asteroid mining

Why use steel when you can use titanium?

ship some from venus

the ayys told NASA took fuck off their lunar base :P

oh ok, I guess we need to move some spess coal at a couple of KILOMETERS PER SECOND! Just so we can have steel on the Moon. And plastic. And electrodes for refining shit like aluminum. And a whole bunch of other things that require carbon.

Not against the idea of having a Moon base, but we really do have to acknowledge that the Moon is rather limited when it comes to certain elements.

Oh I don't know, because it's much more energy intensive to refine titanium, and because you need carbon to refine titanium.

>Russia and ESA will join China, while the USA is left alone.
Good
International cooperation bullshit is exactly what's killing space exploration. I want another space race, goddamnit.

you do know how fucking easy it is to transport shit through space, right?
to the point where moving shit all around the solar system is easier to do than bringing shit from earth to LEO

moving carbon around for the steel mills will be no fucking different than the freight train systems we have on earth to do the exact fucking same thing

you're thinking that this is harder than it actually is, it'll be one of the easiest things humanity has ever done

>you do know how fucking easy it is to transport shit through space, right?
What are you, eight years old?

>it's much more energy intensive to refine titanium, and because you need carbon to refine titanium.
Compared to lifting steel up from Earth? And the carbon used in refining titanium can be reused as the titanium metal is pure.

The point is to stay here until proper technology for easy space travel is invented. Otherwise its hopeless.

9175247
shitposters do not deserve (You)s

...

oh boy, so we're going to recycle volatiles! I'm sure that will be easy! You know, preventing leakage in the hard vacuum of space and all. Oh and converting CO2 to graphite, yup, that's so EASY!

The only reason I can think of for a permanent base on the moon is mining helium 3 for fusion power, which we don't have the capability to do yet.

Mars is a desert wasteland. I can't think of a good reason to go there other than because we can.

The only reason I can think of for a permanent base on the moon is mining helium 3 for fusion power, which we don't have the capability to do yet.

ESA is just too retarded and will stay with NASA

>giving it a (You)

I'd do this gladly. I don't live to eat. I live to read and game. I can do that tier of living in any awful space environment. I'd even feel more secure knowing the average IQ was much higher and the barrier between me and the outside world was high-IQ technicians against inanimate natural hostility rather than normal-IQ police officers against animate human hostility.

the moon is going to be the grandest industrial park mankind has ever seen

the biggest excavators to ever be built will be featured there, and it will be glorious

>carbon which are necessary to turn iron into steel
Holy shit, man. Come out of the 19th century, join us in the 21st. There are lots of kinds of steel, and many other interesting structural metals.

Anyway, the moon does have carbon. Carbonaceous asteroids have been falling on it for billions of years.

>>There are lots of kinds of steel, and many other interesting structural metals.
now what about plastics, electrodes for aluminum reduction/batteries, crucibles for silicon production, organic fucking chemistry, and pretty much anything that requires carbon?

>>Anyway, the moon does have carbon
in parts per million concentrations! Meaning you need to move HUGE TONNAGES of regolith to get tiny amounts of it.
islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM5E.html#t513
>>Carbonaceous asteroids have been falling on it for billions of years.
yeah, good luck finding them.

>>implying the impact won't volatilize the carbon

The spice must flow.

You would manufacture alternative materials that could take their place, or fucking import them because you do not need to manufacture literally everything ever on a mining base designed to export metal for constructing shit

Like here on earth, importing specific supplies is very common place, for specialization is the grand thing space bases will do

>colonizing moon
>2 years latter
>Everyone's skeletons turned into jelly because of gravity
>barely an atmosphere(literally barely, Nasa found out recently that they actually have one formed of sodium and potassium)
>Can´t terra form at all
>shitty resources which don´t worth the cost to send to earth
>basically impossible to survive there alone
>the mission cost one hundred quadrillion a decade simply because the colony will be heavily reliant on earth as it is impossible to survive there for long periods.

Mars is being selected because it is pretty similar to earth, has an atmosphere.

Mars exists on the outer edge of the habitable zone, a region of the Solar System where life can exist. Mars is on the border of a region known as the extended habitable zone where liquid water on the surface may be supported if concentrated greenhouse gases could increase the atmospheric pressure.

Why does Veeky Forums think that they can outsmart Nasa?

that is some of the shittiest bait I have ever fucking seen
Never before have I seen a post so fucking stupid, so fucking uneducated like this
Never at any point did anything you wrote resemble an intelligent thought
Everyone that read it is now dumber, and may god have mercy on your soul

Carbon is now volatile?
Umm, OK.

There are scientific reasons too such as telescopes and radio telescopes, which can be made quite enormous on a world with 1/6 of the gravity and zero wind. This could be used to form vast baseline interferometric radio telescopes.

You aren't thinking hard enough
Energy wise, it is far less expensive to send shit from the moon to LEO than from the surface of earth to LEO
thus, widescale mining operations would give us the ability to cheaply construct stations around earth and beyond
Lunar mining would also give us the ability to assemble and fuel probes and ships in space, far larger, far stronger and with far more instruments than any probe we could hope to send from earth

The moon has more than fusion fuel, it has lots and lots of delicious metal too, and will be humanity's gilded spaceport when we conquer the galaxy

>relying entirely on natural gravitational forces
>needing an atmosphere
>terraforming
>caring about sending resources to Earth

We need space habitats to get the population of trillions needed for the flood of constant content for VR for absolutely any niche interest.

>Why does Veeky Forums think that they can outsmart Nasa?
Perhaps because NASA leadership demanded Challenger to be launched while the real Veeky Forumsentists told them it would be disastrous. Or because the NASA people of the 1960's have been replaced by career bureaucrats who have killed astronauts in two space shuttle disasters. Or the NASA leadership who has done everything in its powers to NOT follow the advice from Feynman.

There has been a massive rot.

Because of the fear for projects like "muh secrit missile launcher" getting off

There's nazis on the moon, and they have nukes. They'll leave us alone as long as we stay the fuck off.

There is no space travel with rockets. It's all a big hoax for some reason, probably to push people away from actually going into space.

Most plausible theory here

>muh atmosphere
>muh rust
>muh seasonal wet poles
>canyons LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

It's a terrible idea to get stated on Mars. The only logical way to get a solar empire started is by:
1) Moon base
2) Asteroid mining
3) Outer moons

Bombarding Mars with junk asteroids is a good idea, FIGHT ME!

Aren't the planets and suns hollow?

>you're thinking that this is harder than it actually is, it'll be one of the easiest things humanity has ever done

because theres alieans up there, yo

There's nothing of any value on the moon.

>Mars exists on the outer edge of the habitable zone, a region of the Solar System where life can exist.
>where life can exist
You mean where life can feasibly develop. Life outside the CHZ is possible with technology, just don't expect it to be as comfortable or cheap as living on Earth.

>>manufacture alternative materials
make semiconductor grade silicon without a carbon crucible, GO!

>fucking import them because you do not need to manufacture literally everything ever
depending on the amount of consumables you have to ship up, it may not be very practical to make things on the Moon.

Are we necessarily saving mass by making things on the Moon?

CO2, CO sure as heck are. So your carbonaceous chrondite impacts the Moon, it gets really fucking hot. So fucking hot that the carbon inside can snatch oxygen from SiO2 in the soil and turn into CO2.

Of course, we've yet to find any carbonaceous chrondites on the Moon, so we can expect such things to be rare.

>>Bombarding Mars with junk asteroids is a good idea, FIGHT ME!
how are you going to get enough delta V to move something that masses more than a mountain.

I think you're being retarded on purpose

The moon would be useful for giganigga quantities of steel, titanium, aluminum, water, and other shit we like building out of or use as fuel, as that is what it is rich in
Asteroids can get us all the carbon, rare earth elements, and platinum group metals we need because that's what those are rich in
nobody is fucking planning on making computer chips on the moon, because there's no goddamn reason to make computer chips on the moon, other places are doing so instead, and will sell them in exchange for the construction materials you're refining

you'd save insane amounts of money because of how goddamn expensive it is to move mass through the atmosphere and gravity well of earth
The moon is not going to mine gigatons titanium to make lamps and cars for earth, it's going to mine that titanium for habitat stations and battleships for use in space, because there is not a chance in hell that someone will pay bring up the megatons of mass needed to build such things from earth

Solar sails; there's no hurry. Sink Phobos while we are at it.

>>water
Available in ppm quantities in lunar soil, just like carbon! The recent results of the lunar interior being wet have been disputed:
m.phys.org/news/2017-08-analysis-rusty-lunar-moon-interior.html

We do know there is water in permanently shadowed craters, but current estimates are that this is not much. Current estimates are that the volume of water we could obtain from the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon, would have about the volume of sydney harbor. For something distributed across the entire moon this isn't that much. I wouldn't exactly call this a giganigga quantity of water.

In addition, we don't know much about the environment of permanently shadowed craters. We do know it's difficult to obtain power in craters that are permanently shadowed.

>> computer chips
No, what you need silicon for is making solar cells for power.

Sure, you save money, but do you save enough money to justify the cost of sending mining equipment, refineries, and consumables to the Moon?

Sure, future space battleships are cool and all, but the real question is at what point in terms of mass put on the Moon do we need to put manufacturing equipment up. At what point are the costs justified?

>pointedly ignores the other materials to focus specifically and exclusively on one particular thing
>intentionally ignores the fact that mines are permanent things and would continuously output
the materials they mine
>ignores the fact that most of the equipment can be created and assembled on site through 3D printing
yep you're a shitposter
ok, so we take out the water part, Good think it's ridiculously common in asteroids, They can mine for the water instead of the moon, that doesn't stop the moon from supplying and building that fleet of science ships and habitat stations for people to live in, it will just be the hulls that are made from moon metal instead of the whole thing at once
funny, the exact same system and process happens on earth too, what a coincidence

And pray tell how are you going to extract those other materials especially without using much hydrogen?

>> mines are permanent things
The equipment doing the mining and refining is not permanent. Mining machines break down and require maintenance. Extracting materials require consumables. Even if we say attempt to recycle CO2 from our graphite electrodes burning up from reducing aluminum oxide to aluminum and carbothermic reduction of titanium oxide to titanium, we are going to get some leakage.

>> most of the equipment can be 3D printed
Prove it

The moon would be the perfect exotic resort for the rich, and unlike Mars which requires insane dedication and commitment to colonize or even visit, people can go to Luna, fuck around, then come back at the end of the week.

It's in a legal gray area too (gray rocks, get it?) So you could do whatever you wanted up there without repercussions....just gambling I'm sure.

The moon also would allow us to launch larger vehicles and satellites into space for much cheaper than we can on Earth if a long magnetic mass driver was built. With such low gravity we could also build a space elevator with existing materials.

Scientists could experiment with dagerous or risky substances etc. without risking the earth's biosphere.

A moon base would be an incredible location for both radio and optical astronomy.

I disagree with everyone who thinks mining would be profitable, other than in situ resource utilization there's no point mining anything to sell; but the list of other great benefits still makes it better choice than Mars.

Asteroid mining is a waste of time, and only Titan is suitable for a base if you can keep out the cyanide gas and stay warm.

Radiation will kill anyone stupid enough to go to Europa, and even if you land dem icy sea monsters.

The current objective should be the asteroid belt.

>ultra high quality rare earth elements and platinum group metals in greater quantities than exists in the entirety of the earth's crust in individual asteroids
>water and volatiles out the ass for fuel
>waste of time
is this some sort of retard olympics or something?

no, that would be completely fucking retarded
the asteroid belt is far, far too distant to do anything in at the moment, We have no logistics, no industry, and no ability to send anything of decent size there in any reasonable timeframe
The moon is ideal because it has lots of materials to harvest, is extremely close, and can be used as a spaceport and shipyard to send those more distant missions, this is why NASA is planning the deep space gateway

the asteroids that will be mined are going to be the fucktons of NEOs listed here asterank.com/
those will give the exact same shit that the belt asteroids will, but wont cost and arm and a leg to reach and start mining

>implying undergrads on Veeky Forums are "the real scientists"

9178488
>reading comprehension
You don't get a (You)

>The moon is ideal because it has lots of materials to harvest
The entire asteroid belt has about 4% of the Moon's mass.

Can we compare space travel to the age of discoveries? I'd say we're at a pre-Columbian analogue right now, just travelling small distances in precarious ships.

>Going to Mars before Moon is colonized is like trying to run before learning to walk.

Waiting until the Moon is colonized before going to Mars is like waiting until you can win an ultra-marathon before learning how to tread water. That is to say, once we can go to the Moon often and easily enough to warrant a full blown Moon base, we can work on going to Mars as well.

With reusable launch vehicle technology the cost of putting mass into orbit drops to the point that you can justify launches from Earth that only carry fuel instead of trying to produce fuel from resources on the Moon. That means you don't really need the Moon at all to go to Mars, except maybe as a prerequisite to learning more about spending a lot of time far from Earth in reduced gravity.

Also, if your eventual goal is getting to Mars, but you really want a Moon base to start with, you can just size your launch vehicle for your eventual Mars effort and use the extra capability to help your Moon program proceed faster. That beats eventually needing to design a new, bigger rocket in the future, but good luck convincing a politician on taking a more expensive first step instead of two steps that would cost a lot more in total, but gives them the option to just drop the bigger vehicle at a later date (this will happen to SLS Block 2).

>those gas giant cores

Jupiter's core temperature is like 4x hotter than Earth's, even the coldest gas giant core is probably more than twice as hot as Earth's core.

Yes you will lose some carbon even if you try to keep the loop closed. Luckily, there IS carbon on the Moon, just not in high concentrations, and most of it is deeper underground. As long as the industrial system is producing goods is will be mining large quantities of rock, and as long as the rock it mines up contains enough carbon to compensate for leakages in the system then there's literally no issue.

Also as long as the Moon colony was nuclear powered, obviously via liquid fuel breeder reactors, they'd have essentially unlimited energy regardless of the time of day.

Titan is shit, the rocks are water and therefore there's no significant mineral resources including nuclear fuels, plus it's too far away.

Ideally if you're going to colonize the Saturnine moons you're going to focus on the smaller ones and just build space habitats rather than attempt to live on Titan, with it's high delta V requirements and lack of most resources. You can stay long term anywhere in the Saturnine system because the planet has very weak Van Allen belts.

Titan is most useful as a research lab for studying exotic prebiotic environments and possibly even for experimenting on artificial cryo-life.

I am not a regular Veeky Forums poster and am borderline uneducated by stem major standards but I will take a shot at this.

>more practical
Getting nailed with radiation on a rock with no atmosphere is not more practical. Everyone who stayed there would have cancer after any significant amount of time. Mars has an atmosphere that can somewhat shield radiation. Also mars has water and resources that lead us to believe it could be made to be long term sustainable without repeat supply trips. The moon is pretty much guarenteed to never be built up into a sustainable ecosystem, you'd have to build scifi dome-type cities and sustain them with resources from earth. And also what would be the benefit of doing this? To say "hey we made it to the moon"? Mars would have the benefit of giving as a pretty distant jumping off point for future missions in our solar system to go a little quicker, maybe.

There's really just no benefit to existing on the moon, and no chance of ever building it up into something worth existing on. With mars that isn't the case. Also living on the moon would give everyone cancer.

>Getting nailed with radiation on a rock with no atmosphere is not more practical. Everyone who stayed there would have cancer after any significant amount of time.

Not if you use lunar soil for shielding. This you have to do on Mars too, because while Mars atmosphere helps a little, it is not enough. Any deep space colony, and it does not matter if we are talking about Moon, Mars or asteroids here, will inevitably be buried under few meters of soil. Cosmic rays are a bitch. It is one reason why Musk is interested in tunnel boring machines recently.

>ore practical in the long run to build a moon base

100% agree... build thriving moon colony THEN go to Mars.

>No, what you need silicon for is making solar cells for power.
For electronics you need monocrystalline Si, typically cut from a boule. I have seen projects where they use quartz crucibles.

For solar cells you can use polycrystalline Si, and for that you can melt Si in large quartz crucibles and let them cool down slowly. The requirements are far simpler than for the monocrystalline route.

Sure. Though a strawpoll indicated a surprisingly large fraction were post docs. That or they thought they were.

FINALLY!

Geez, It's simply a PR reason. Dumbasses. Get back to the moon dammit!

you can't build a Space Elevator on a tidally locked body

READ this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_space_elevator

Meanwhile the Japanese companies show some moxie. Pic. related.

ah, that makes sense actually... doesn't seem quite as stable though, give it enough of a push and it'll fall back into the moon's Sphereoid of influence
>TFW the moon is gonna become blue permanently

The Moon may depend on Earth not exploding. Mars is separate.

>tfw your super rich cousins will never take you on all inclusive space cruise to Luna resort
>you will never play low gravity mini golf
>you will never play low gravity laser tag
>you will never do a short reenactment of apollo 11
>you will never swim in a zero gravity pool, "surfacing" in a bubble to catch your breath

>you will be alive for the ancient internet and trump
>you were born in time to watch the birth of cellphones
>your parents existed in a time before tv
>dank memes
its not all bad i guess, got to experience some major cultural turning points. i bet anons in the future will be all butthurt they never got to experience bi-gender society, or drive the deathtrap that is the car

but still, i want to play luna mini golf or low-g paintball damn it